Commission plans public input on hospital

The amount of public input the Grant County Commission includes in its upcoming decision over the future ownership of Gila Regional Medical Center is entirely up to the commissioners themselves, as a Daily Press review of state law found none is required of local governments when selling or leasing property. According to commissioners, though, they will include a significant amount before determining the future of the county-owned, board-directed public hospital.

After months of closed executive sessions and committee meetings, the commission has scheduled another executive session during their regular meeting Thursday, to discuss “disposal of real property.” These sessions at the end of the commission’s public meetings have been common recently, as commissioners continued their exploration — under a contract with health care consultants, brokers and investment bankers Juniper Advisory — into which option might best serve Gila Regional and its patients. But Thursday, for the first time in months, the agenda also includes mention of “any action necessary as a result of closed executive session.”

Commission Chair Billy Billings, though, told the Daily Press that the commission would not be taking any action at that time.

“I can honestly say — and the doctors that met with us can attest to it — that I’m pretty sure not one commissioner has made a firm decision at this time,” Billings said.

“I would be surprised if we had anything to talk about in executive session,” said District 2 Commissioner Brett Kasten. “There would have to be a revelation that I haven’t foreseen. We’ve done our due diligence with the suitors and with the hospital. Now we’re processing that.”

According to New Mexico statute, nothing legally prevents the commission from taking a vote to sell Gila Regional — or lease it, or keep it the same — on Thursday or at any other meeting where it’s been placed on the agenda. No public hearing would be required outside of the meeting itself. Chapter 13, Article 6 of state statute, titled “Sale of property by state agencies or local public bodies; authority to sell or dispose of property; approval of appropriate approval authority,” doesn’t require anything of the commission outside of a legally advertised vote in an open meeting.

“It’s laid out pretty clearly in statute,” Grant County Manager Charlene Webb said Tuesday. “It has to be approved by the DFA (the New Mexico Department of Finance and Administration). The number of public hearings you have is up to you.”

Since its members first approved the request for proposals from firms to evaluate options for Gila Regional, however, the commission has insisted they wanted to conduct the process as openly as they could. And while all discussions with Juniper Advisory, the committee of commissioners, Gila Regional staff and other health care professionals, and visits to hospitals in Las Cruces and in Globe, Ariz., were closed to the public, legal notices for each were published in the Daily Press and provided to other news outlets.

The commission has scheduled and published notices for several public meetings with different segments of the community over the next two weeks, beginning after its regular meeting Thursday at 9 a.m. Commissioners will meet with the county’s “general medical staff” at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 25, at the Southwest Bone and Joint Institute. Next Thursday, the commission has scheduled two meetings — one with Gila Regional employees at 9 a.m. at the Grant County Veterans Memorial Business and Conference Center, and one at 6:30 p.m., same location, for the general public.

“The public meetings are so we hear from everybody — physicians and the general public and everyone,” Billings said. “And these weren’t planned because of any pressure. The majority of the commissioners knew from the get-go that we were going to have public meetings. We’re not making these decisions in the cover of dark like we’ve been accused.”